The Politics of Visuality and the Erasure of the Iraq War

Professor Marita Sturken

Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Media Development, New York University

This paper examines the visual economy of the Iraq War and its cultural memory, focusing in particular on the politics of visuality through which the war has been effectively erased from public discourse. It examines the images of the war and its aftermath, and the art projects of counter-visuality that have engaged with the war’s memory in order to understand its erasure within the project of American Empire. This paper thus aims to engage with the larger question of the politics of visuality and visibility in the context of the post 9/11 war on terror.